Guido - I tried it with red, but it didn't work very well, and as Elphaba is not the original name of The Witch of the West, and the costume is based on the 1939 movie I decided silver wouldn't be right either, so she's stayed with black!

Patricia, I mix ref and on the fly guesswork. At the Illustration Master Class this year at Amherst Donato Giancola and Dan Dos Santos and all of the faculty emphasised the use of good ref, something I didn't really do much before. So if I'm not sure of folds in fabric I either trawl the net or set something up that simulates what I want and photograph it. The ref I had here was very useful although I quickly moved away from it. I'm doing a gif to show the process if anyone's interested..?